I just can’t comprehend that AZ, GA and WI even have a chance of being R, based on the R candidates.
The wife and i are comprehending moving back to WI to be closer to her parents, but seeing them reelect Johnson (and elect whoever the R Governor candidate is) really makes me not want to have anything to do with the state.
This chart basically lays out why Democrats will lose this election. For the first time in a very long time real wages skyrocketed while Donald Trump was in office and since 2020 they have plummeted. Hard to say anything else because the real wage is how people feel they are doing. They felt best economically when Dems took control and it has gone downhill for the last 2 years.
This was mostly due to the tax cut for corporations which most Democrats hate, but it freed up a ton of money to pay employees. I have said before Humana where I work went from a 37% tax rate to a 21% rate overnight and they invested 1/3 in employees, 1/3 in ownership, and 1/3 in capital investments.
Government deficits heat up the economy while leaving us with permanently increased interest payments.
No, the tax cut was not a net long term benefit to Americans in general.
And, if we want to heat up the economy at the expense of permanently increased interest payments, we can give 100% of the direct tax cuts to workers. They will spend it, and some of that spending will bubble up to owners.
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Yes it was. Corporations are the best job engine the world has ever created. That’s not debatable no matter what you think of corporations. Giving them money to spend on employees and the future is a huge win for the economy. Do some individuals get wealthy from that setup? Sure but tax them individually not through the cash flow of the corporation they own. Capital gains taxes, taxes in dividends, taxes on share repurchases. All of these things can mitigate the obscene wealth and still allow corporations to create future productivity and pay great good wages.
I have nothing against corporations, but what you’re describing to me here is “something for nothing”.
We got free money because the government borrowed it, in a way that the government acknowledged was unsustainable.
That’s okay, but I’d rather do it in a time when we need the boost. Like during COVID for example.
Anyway, I don’t want to be ganging up on you. Just want to say that we can disagree about the nature of stimuli, but still be in favor of large capitalist corporations running america.
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That’s an interesting graph, but I wonder how much ordinary people are actually feeling that and how much is noise.
If the shutdowns resulted in temporary job losses felt primarily in the lower-middle-class sector (my hair dresser, my cleaning lady, my dental hygienist, a lot of retail employees) but the actuaries and accountants and doctors and lawyers and engineers are still working remotely then that will drive up the median wage even with ZERO change to any employed individual’s pay.
It looks like the big bump is basically the shutdowns and it was over well before Biden took office.
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And also what it looks like if you go out further. Wages went up first and then inflation. But I don’t exactly remember when the inflation started.
The spike was artificial and due to many low wage workers being out of the workforce for the first year of the pandemic. Wages have come down as those workers returned. The rise in wages started in 2015 two years prior to Trump taking office.
Trump constraining immigration also supported wage growth 2017+, but we now have a worker shortage in part due to that and that is adding to inflation.
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You’re on the right track here, but you still vote for people that have no interest in raising taxes to an appropriate level. I don’t understand why you think democrats don’t align with you when you have laid out their exact plan as your goal.
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Yup, very few individuals would have had wage reductions, so the feels on this are probably not material.
In the chart, how much of the late Trump-era spike was the result of actual wage growth, rather than a lot of sub-median jobs disappearing during the lockdown and slow recovery therefrom?
I’d agree with the notion that real earnings have been on the decline due to inflation, and that that phenomenon is a big problem for the D’s this election cycle. I’m just skeptical that that chart really supports that hypothesis.
EDIT: Ninja’d by The_President.
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Yeah, I mean the end point on the graph is still well above the pre-Covid level and it says it’s adjusted for inflation, which is why I added my second point about the wages going up first and THEN inflation.
I think we’ve had this discussion before. Most corporations in the US are S-corps. They are taxed on a pass through basis. If you have a proposal for taxing C-corps as pass through entities, write it out. I’ll ask how that impacts non-US shareholders. I think they should pay US taxes for the privilege of running a business in the US.
Under current law, a cut in corporate taxes is mostly a tax cut for wealthy Americans and foreigners. I think we would be much better off giving that tax cut to workers directly.
I don’t know what this means. Lots of Americans are employed by big corporations. So what? In market economies, most people are going to have jobs, whether or not we have big corporations. A job is just a means to an end, the goal is take-home pay. I think workers have more take-home pay if we give the tax cut directly to the workers instead of giving it to the owners and hope that some of it trickles down.
You forgot to mention the owners’ share of that tax cut and the impact on the debt.
100% of economic goods are produced by workers. Giving them money which they can either spend or invest is a huge win for most Americans. I don’t care about “the economy” except to the extent that it makes ordinary people better off.
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Corporations already pay taxes. Their employees pay income taxes, their owners pay taxes on their share of the income, then they pay taxes on capital gains. Taxi g the profit margin between cost and revenue is a double tax on top of all the other tax they pay. It’s not even close to nothing.
The only Oz-Fetterman debate is tonight at 8 PM Eastern time. I am not confident, though I already know I am for Fetterman no matter how the debate goes.
I agree it’s double taxation although I don’t think the fact of double taxation means anything, besides that you need to add the taxes together to understand them.
In any case, my point is just that I have nothing against changing how we do taxes, but doing so in a way that causes an unsustainable deficit increase (to the extent that we made the policies temporary) is by definition a stimulus. Which is to say, it’s money for nothing.
I don’t oppose lowering corporate (or any) taxes. I oppose stimulating the economy at full employment.
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So the NY Times had MTG on the cover of its most recent Sunday magazine and the feature article was about her. It was almost flattering as it portrayed her as a force within the GOP that will only get stronger if the GOP takes the House after the mid-terms.
Smartly, imo, the NY Times did not provide examples in the article of comical things she has said. Rather they focused on what her agenda is likely to be after the mid-term elections. I confess I had not focused on that but rather just on her silly comments in the past.
There was only one humorous quote mentioned. She wants to impeach Biden but she doesn’t think Kevin McCarthy will initiate the process because “he will insist on having facts”. Says it all.
She also claims to be very smart but she hides that well.
In my experience people who claim to be very smart are usually not that.
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Wages didn’t really go up. Median wages went up because the bottom wage earners dropped out. Nick should know better but says this is a messaging issue with democrats.
I guess the problem is democrats aren’t lying with statistics?
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I mean, I think wages at the bottom went up some. Dunkin’ (by me) didn’t used to advertise $15 an hour. That was considered a liberal pipe dream not so long ago.
That said, the post-spike increase compared to the pre-spike level might still be due to lower workforce participation at the low-earning end of the spectrum.